The violent incident for which the officers pleaded guilty occurred in January after a white neighbor called police with a complaint about two Black men and a white woman staying together in a house in Braxton, Mississippi. Six “Goon Squad” officers were eventually dispatched to the home, where they broke in unannounced and then tortured the two men, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, for over an hour. The officers called the men racial slurs. They shocked Jenkins and Parker with stun guns and poured various liquids down their mouths, the Associated Press reported. They forced the men to shower together to wash away evidence of the assault carried out by the police officers. The cops also sexually abused the two men with a sex toy, according to court documents.

The assault ended after the police officers subjected Jenkins to what was intended to be a mock execution, putting a gun in the man’s mouth and pulling the trigger. The cop apparently did not realize the gun was loaded and shot Jenkins, injuring his tongue, jaw and neck. “I thought I was dead,” Jenkins  told People during an interview about the shooting. Parker, meanwhile, also feared that he would be killed by the cops. “At the end, I did say we were about to die,” he told People.

After the shooting, the cops attempted to remove evidence of their assault and frame the two men with planted weapons and drugs. Eventually, one of the six officers admitted to having lied about the incident, which led to the six cops being identified and charged with a wide variety of crimes. All six officers — Brett McAlpin, Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmon, Jeffrey Middleton, Daniel Opdyke and Joshua Hartfield — pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction of justice. Dedmon and Elward also pleaded guilty to home invasion for kicking in the door to the residence, and Elward also pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for shooting Jenkins.

The six officers are expected to face between five and 30 years in jail for their various crimes, though the judge in the case could impose different sentences. The men have also pleaded guilty to several civil rights violations in a federal case and will be sentenced for those crimes as well. Jenkins and Parker have additionally filed a $400 million civil lawsuit against the officers. And investigations launched since the January attack show that several of the officers have been involved in a variety of other violent acts against Black men dating back to 2019. These include two prior incidents of cops putting guns in men’s mouths, as well as two Black men who died from their encounters with members of the Goon Squad.

With this growing list of alleged crimes, the Mississippi Goon Squad will likely be behind bars for some time. Their long campaign of racial terror has not only recalled the history of racial violence in Mississippi, but it also reawakens a nationwide discussion about police violence against Black people and the tendency of cops to face little to no consequences for their actions. This time, at least, the horrific nature of the Good Squad’s attacks eventually became too much to ignore, but the fact that they seem to have gotten away with so much for so long highlights the need for greater accountability measures.